Exploration

Archive: 3 March 2005

I just got back from Search Engine Strategies New York—more on the conference later—and had a fascinating encounter there.

What happened was I decided to check out the exhibit halls (they had two). As I looped around a large booth, a well-dressed man standing in the aisle said, “Excuse me, sir. Are you a webmaster?”. He had the kind of smooth English-Australian accent so favored of infomercial hosts and lower-grade movie villains. I admitted that I was, and he informed me he represented an online casino firm that was looking for “revenue partners”. He was very keen to sign me up so I could start making money.

That’s right: I was being spammed in person.

I was so stunned, I could only tell him I wasn’t interested and walk away, shaking my head. It wasn’t until later that it occurred to me that I should have gotten his contact information and then passed it on to Jonas.

I recently started receiving, for no readily apparent reason, bloated HTML e-mail from Dakota Air Parts, whose site is as lovely as their unsolicited e-mail tactics. Anyway, I noticed that the mail was coming from what appeared to be a single human, and given that the message also included their 701 area code phone numbers, mailing address, and so on, I could reasonably go ahead and respond with a removal request. I sort of had to, since there wasn’t a dedicated address for unsubscribe requests.

So off went my response, stating that I’d never asked for the mail and would like to stop receiving it pronto. Not a few minutes later, I received a new message. Here’s how it started out:

K.C. here,
I'm protecting myself from receiving junk mail.
Just this once, click on the link below so I can receive your emails.
You won't have to do this again.
http://spamarrest.com...

So in order to stop receiving junk mail from K.C., I had to prove that my mail to him wasn’t junk.

Ah… the sweet, sweet taste of irony, mixed with bold hints of utter cluelessness. So delicious.